Earlier this week I was working in the garden when a man came out of his pickup truck and beckoned me over. When I inquired what he wanted he said money, and upon replying I didn't have any he said he wanted to know if I'm selling the house. When I said no, he drove away and I shrugged it off as an odd yet minor incident.

Until today when I noticed he was standing across the street, watching the house. Not moving. For several hours.

It reminded me of a tumblr post I read several months ago of a woman complaining that a man was in his car, watching her work in her front lawn, most likely for sexual pleasure. When she approached him and said to knock it off, he said he could do what he wanted. So she took his license plate number and called the police, and became indignant when the police said the man was in the right; he legally wasn't doing anything wrong. She received support from the user base, who decried the police as useless and leaving women subject to stalking and whatnot.

I'm with the police on this one. Although I didn't like how the guy was just standing there observing the inhabitants of the house, he really wasn't doing anything but watching. He's not peering through my bedroom window as I change clothes. He's not walking up and down my driveway. It's weirding me out a bit, but that's within his rights. Because what is the alternative? Do the police haul you off for making someone else unsettled? That's why we have problems with blacks being forced out of parks or removed for loitering even though they're not doing anything wrong. Yeah, it may be strange that a ghetto kid is walking through this high-class neighborhood, but that doesn't mean he can't.

It's harder to prevent crime rather than react to one that's already done because outside of incidents with a guy wandering around with a gun, you don't really know the intentions of the individual. And even if they're thinking about it, they haven't have acted yet. And maybe if you think they have bad intentions, you've misinterpreted the situation. It's such a fuzzy thing that there's no way we can quantify it in a law that police can actually act upon.

So yeah, you shouldn't be creepy, but simultaneously I recognize your right to be creepy.